The Reason I Hold On
by Escaping Propriety
Summary: My take on the final scene between Cora and Rumplestiltskin. Songfic.


AN: Hello, my lovelies! Tonight's episode was crazy. I actually cried a little, which is why I wrote this. So, I have never written a songfic but I always wanted to try. Meaning that if it sucks, I am very non-apologetic that it is crappy but sorry that you had to suffer.

Coincidentally, I had been listening to this song over and over for the past few days. Then the episode happened and BAM.

Cora + Rumple = DIVINE INSPIRATION

Disclaimer: Don't own anything. Don't sue me. You will literally only get 5 cats, 4 dogs, two horses, and a tendency for falling down handicap ramps.

Song: Stay by Rihanna.

First viewpoint/verse-chorus is Cora's and second is Rumple's.

**The Reason I Hold On**

**All along it was a fever**

**A cold sweat hot-headed believer**

It is actually going to be this easy. I have to say that I never believed it would end quite like this. Him. Me. The dagger. This as the final battle.

But we started together. He created my lust and taught me how to hone my skills as no one else ever has. So, we should end it together.

He gave me everything. I sometimes think that this has been his intent from the very beginning.

His faithful student holding his life in eager hands.

The life of Rumplestiltskin.

**I threw my hands in the air and said, show me something**

**He said, if you dare, come a little closer**

How he had once tempted me.

His words in my ears. His hands, magical all on their own. I can't quite recall ever being so affected by a single person in that manner. With only a glance, he could set my entire mind and body on fire.

But I let him do that. I allowed it. I came to that conclusion many years. Because that is what that feeling appeared to be and I understood it to be no more than a weakness.

Just something I let myself feel.

But without a heart, it is so much less complicated.

Now I feel nothing.

**Round and around and around and around we go**

**Oh, now tell me now tell me now tell me **

**Now you know**

"Did you ever love me?"

His looks haven't changed at all. The fact hardly affects me and yet I am doomed to notice. I can't get past him and he must know it.

That must be why he questions my motives. I know that he would retort to me that it wasn't a question about my motives; it was a question about me. Rumple can't stand to die without knowing everything.

It is quaint. A small gesture of old affection. Nostalgic in the gentlest sense.

Nonetheless, that question. It is even heavier than the jagged blade in my hand but I can't explain how. I like to think that I am too strong for such a flippant ideal.

But it holds back my hand.

The question in itself is a request.

It asks that I answer it.

Did I love him? If only he had known.

**Not really sure how to feel about it**

**Something in the way you move**

**Make me feel like I can't live without you**

**It takes me all the way**

**I want you to stay**

This is a moment for the truth.

It is the last one that we will have together.

It is what I will hold closest to my heart for all eternity.

His sandy hair disarrayed and lips dried in suffering. I could hold him close and comfort him if I weren't so determined. If I weren't cursed with my own mission and my own needs. Oh, there was a time that he was a part of them.

He was the one thing that I wanted above everything else.

So much that I had to tear out my own heart to save myself.

That is what I have to tell him. He should know that much.

* * *

**It's not much of a life you're living**

**It's not just something you take **

**It's given**

She always managed to have that look.

Hardened. Cool. Collected, even in the face of murder.

When I met her though she was the complete opposite. I had mistook her cunning for cowardice and weakness. That would have been my first mistake with her.

A mistake that would cost me many more times in our encounters over the years. Still, I have fallen for this several times.

No one would understand this thing between us. I can't even give it a common name. It is so much more and we make it into something lesser. But it is there.

It never gets any simpler to look at her and not feel conflicted to the end. She knows this even now with my death in her hand.

Cora.

**Round and around and around, we go**

**Oh, now tell me now tell me now tell me**

**Now you know**

She's holding back.

I might even suggest that she doesn't want to do this.

Although I can't imagine how this interaction would occur without my approaching demise. Would she have made me grovel before her? Bow like the filth that she had been treated as? Kneel down and hail to her glory?

Once, I was down on knees before her. Her legs over my shoulders. Her eyes clenched shut in pleasure. My mouth repeating between her legs the same words over and over.

Cora. My queen. My love.

However, those days are long past. So, why do they come to me now; when I am on the brink of death. Why do I only have one final thing to say to her?

Her steps linger one after another and by the final tread, I speak the only thing I left in my soul.

It is what I reserved for her.

"Did you ever love me?"

**Not really sure how to feel about it**

**Something in the way you move**

**Makes me feel like I can't live without you**

**It takes me all the way**

**I want you to stay**

Whatever made me think that she loved me?

I realize after asking that I don't even know the answer to that. I can see Cora in her youth every moment that I now look at her. She remains quite the beauty.

It must have been that first moment of seeing her trying to climb out of the windows that I knew I liked her. She reminded me of myself in that capacity. I would have ran.

But unlike me, she felt no shame in running. That was the bravado I lacked. I didn't believe in, or defend myself when it mattered.

She did. If I hadn't stopped her, she would have scaled down that wall. Blood red gown and all, without a second thought.

But it was her need for my confession, the memory that powered my magic. Even her usage of the word, _bloodlust_. She spoke it to me as though she meant for it to run through my body and enchant me to the core. That was when I enjoyed her the most.

Her skin under my hands is what powered all love spells I would ever cast afterwards.

I wonder if she would still do this if she knew.

**Oh, the reason I hold on**

**Oh, cause I need this hole gone**

She only looks at me as though I had taken the world from her. I know that is impossible. She has no heart to feel, but I still have mine and I do feel. Worst, I am learning so in my last hour.

I now see that she has won my soul.

I know when and how I came to love her.

But all that I can do is to let her reveal the rest of our mystery.

**Funny, you're the broken one but I'm the only one who needed saving**

**Cause when you never see the light**

**It's hard to know which one of us is caving**

"Why do you think I ripped my heart out?"

I try not to hope. Her comment could mean several things and not what I wi-

"You were the only man that I ever truly loved."

Her touch across my cheek happens and I am lost for a moment. I remember the night she bore her daughter. I had waited underneath the castle balcony.

With my magic, I gave her no pain. An easy and safe labor was my gift to her. As well as for the child that should have been mine. Regina should have been mine. This family should have been mine.

But ultimately Cora should have been mine.

She smiles in a way that I internally proclaim as the most beautiful in the entire world. She stands up as only a true queen would rise. Then as she raises my blade, as calm as any warrior, my final thought are only to her.

I love you, Cora. Now and forever.

**Not really sure how to feel about it**

**Something in the way you move**

**Makes me feel like I can't live without you**

**It takes me all the way**

**I want you to stay**


End file.
